03/2/2015 2:43 am  #1


Herb Jeffries does his best Bing Crosby

I was listening to some recordings by jazz pianist Earl Hines and his orchestra from the early 1930s, and a couple of them featured vocalist Herb Jeffries, who later sang with Duke Ellington, and was also a Western movie star. These are Jeffries earliest recordings, and on "Just to Be in Carolina" (1934) in particular he is clearly imitating Bing: adopting many of Bing's mannerisms from the period, including the "Crosby cry" and the husky vocal tone. Just another example of how pervasive Bing's influence was on popular singers at the time.
Here is a link to the song on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7dbLyZMRFI.
 

Last edited by Jim Determan (03/2/2015 4:15 am)

 

03/2/2015 9:51 am  #2


Re: Herb Jeffries does his best Bing Crosby

Jim Determan wrote:

I was listening to some recordings by jazz pianist Earl Hines and his orchestra from the early 1930s, and a couple of them featured vocalist Herb Jeffries, who later sang with Duke Ellington, and was also a Western movie star. These are Jeffries earliest recordings, and on "Just to Be in Carolina" (1934) in particular he is clearly imitating Bing: adopting many of Bing's mannerisms from the period, including the "Crosby cry" and the husky vocal tone. Just another example of how pervasive Bing's influence was on popular singers at the time.
Here is a link to the song on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7dbLyZMRFI.
 

Jim, I think that many will agree with you - not only the basic style of early Crosby but the Crosby manerisms themselves are there. In later years Herb's voice became deeper and more husky. He was vocalist with both Duke Ellington and Earl Hines and therefore had a rather more jazz/blues influenced approach for much of his work. He died only last year at the age of 100. 

But were there many of that generation and those immediately following who were not following Bing to some degree?


 

 

03/2/2015 1:57 pm  #3


Re: Herb Jeffries does his best Bing Crosby

A little bit of Bob Crosby too.

 

03/2/2015 3:14 pm  #4


Re: Herb Jeffries does his best Bing Crosby

Jim,

I totally agree with you: the Bing influence is clearly there, which shows that not only white singers were influenced by Bing's style in the 1930s. At any rate, Jeffries always admitted to Bing's influence on his singing style, and in later years, he recorded a nice tribute to Bing called I Remember the Bing, which Audiophile Records has reissued on CD, along with If I Were King, Jeffries's tribute to Nat King Cole. You can find the CD here:

http://www.amazon.com/If-Were-King-Remember-Bing/dp/B0000DERAM/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1422976073&sr=1-1&keywords=herb+jeffries+bing

It's a very recommendable CD indeed. And, from that album, here's Jeffries singing "It's Easy to Remember." Though he isn't imitating Crosby here (he sounds a little more like, say, Johnny Hartman), there are still signs of Bing's style here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3o2i29uGTs

Last edited by Anton G.-F. (03/2/2015 3:15 pm)

 

04/2/2015 2:55 pm  #5


Re: Herb Jeffries does his best Bing Crosby

I may have to find time to go drive to a library with broadband in order to stream some of these links!  This is just the kind of thing I love to listen to and learn about.

It is all too-oo-oo-oo-oo easy to underestimate how pervasive Bing's popularity and influence was in that time period.  When Leadbelly (Huddie Leadbetter) was first being "discovered" and also promoted as the remarkable black folk and blues singer, guitarist, and song writer that he was by white folk music preservationists,  the latter were a bit apalled to discover that in his free time it was common to find Leadbelly playing and singing a Crosby hit cowboy song or other Crosby popular number, as well as other music unbefitting the image of Leadbelly as a symbol of American folk purity and originality.  Not to besmerch the high ideals of the preservationists (which I largely share), but it certainly shows that Leadbelly had wider interests in his love of music and in his instincts about what was worth singing.  He had a big heart, we might say, that couldn't ignore what Bing was putting in the world.  (I ran across this tidbit in some research I was doing a few years ago for a Crosby related article...which I may eventually finish and post somewhere.)

Last edited by Steve Fay (04/2/2015 2:56 pm)

 

04/2/2015 5:38 pm  #6


Re: Herb Jeffries does his best Bing Crosby

Steve,

Although I like the music of the great Leadbelly, I had no idea that he enjoyed Bing. However, it makes sense, and it only goes to show that country, folk, blues, jazz, and pop are styles that are essentially related. Back in the 1920s, the lines that separated musical styles weren't clearly defined, and if they were defined later, it was because of economic, commercial pursuits -- which means that they were somewhat artificially defined. In spite of the efforts of folklorists and preservationists, there really isn't any pure folk, blues, jazz, or country music. These styles are always interrelated with whatever is considered to be pop music during a certain time period. I think that's probably why Leadbelly sang bits of Crosby songs in his spare time, thereby making Crosby somehow a part of Leadbelly's incredibly vast repertoire. The same could be said of Jerry Lee Lewis, who isn't merely a rocker, but who has recorded songs taken from almost every style (country, r&b, blues, pop, jazz, dixieland, &c.), including even some by Bing.

Last edited by Anton G.-F. (04/2/2015 5:41 pm)

 

05/2/2015 2:28 pm  #7


Re: Herb Jeffries does his best Bing Crosby

Anton, those are all salient observations and insights.  Also, I wonder if Bing didn't play a particularly strong role in the mixing of those various musical influences.  As much as I sometimes wish Bing stayed more true to his jazz-related beginnings in his later song choices, the fact that he recorded songs with such a wide range of styles and origins may have made a big difference.  For example, to stay with the cowboy song genre, people could buy records by characters like Haywire Mac (Harry McClintock), singing some of the earliest recorded versions of songs written by or for real cowboys riding the range (including McClintock who did some cowboying in his varied career), or they could hear a singing cowboy in the movie house, --- but when Bing recorded a version of one of these songs an exponentially larger audience heard the song on the radio and bought a recording of the song, not to mention their starting to hum, whistle, and sing the song!  Millions of people who would never see one of McClintock's records or a singing cowboy's movie!  Soon darned near everybody knew the song.  I wonder how many of the folk songs in the primary school music books of the 1950s would have been there if Bing had not helped to popularize them.  The books included many he didn't sing, but also many he did sing, long before those sing-along albums of the 1960s.

Last edited by Steve Fay (05/2/2015 2:32 pm)

 

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